Strategies

Chicago Equity Partners offers a range of investment strategies designed to help investors meet their financial objectives. These strategies are available in different structures ranging from commingled funds to customized accounts. Across the strategies, we add value through adherence to strict investment and risk management procedures, as well as a commitment to ongoing research and innovation.

Equity

The equity investment philosophy at Chicago Equity Partners is based on well-established financial and behavioral theory. We believe active returns are achievable because there are inefficiencies in the market that persist over time. Since the market is complex, the most effective way to identify anomalies is with a research intensive, systematic process. Because changes in fundamentals drive changes in stock price, we believe that analyzing an intersection of earnings, valuation, growth, balance sheet and other relevant metrics creates the best opportunity to identify and exploit these market inefficiencies.

Over the past 25 years, we have found that structured analysis plus disciplined decision making equals success: The best means of generating alpha combines systematic analysis of fundamental variables with rigorous implementation by a team of seasoned industry experts, creating a process that is transparent, explainable, and scalable. Refined over time, our investment process anchors on: rigorous data collection and analysis; an active commitment to innovative research into market and investor behavior; an integrated approach to sourcing alpha and risk management; a disciplined portfolio construction method; and a continuous review of results, with an eye toward improvements in process and outcomes.

Our equity investment process produces well-diversified portfolios of companies with attractive valuation ratios, quality balance sheets, and positive growth and momentum expectations built through a disciplined, risk controlled process, with ultimate goal of generating consistent excess returns. Over the years, Chicago Equity Partners has delivered strong results in products ranging the style and capitalization spectrum. Because of the complex needs of institutional investors and the flexibility and power of our home-grown research engine, Chicago Equity Partners is able to offer an array of customized solutions depending on an investor’s needs.

Fixed Income

The fixed income philosophy at Chicago Equity Partners anchors on only taking those risks in the bond market for which we will be appropriately compensated. Because of the asymmetric nature of bond returns, it is more important to avoid problem issuers than it is to identify the next rising star. Our ultimate goal is to generate attractive risk-adjusted returns.

Our investment process is built around the idea that there are a number of ways to add value in the fixed income markets. Those would include issuer selection, industry rotation, sector allocation, duration management, and yield curve positioning. Distinct from those who rely on static positions in risky securities or sectors in order to generate returns, our process targets dynamic, active portfolio positions relative to the benchmark, in the context of a well-diversified portfolio. At the same time, our process for risk management seeks to eliminate uncompensated or ancillary exposures. As a result, we are able to deliver compelling risk-adjusted returns that can have the added benefit of being lowly correlated to other bond managers.

Our team has decades of experience in executing fixed income strategies across all market cycles through a consistent, disciplined investment process. This process allows Chicago Equity Partners to offer a wide array of standard and customized institutional investment grade fixed income solutions. We offer strategies across a broad range of maturity, credit quality, and sector exposures, including bespoke LDI solutions.

Alternatives

At Chicago Equity Partners, we believe that is possible to generate attractive returns and investment skill through alternative strategies that do not have the “beta” profile of traditional long-only equity and fixed income products. In order to hold appeal for investors, alternatives must achieve an acceptable rate of return and do so with relatively little correlation to the returns of traditional asset classes, thus making for a good portfolio fit over full market cycles. We do not see traditional and alternative investments as wholly distinct investment categories, but different ends of a spectrum of risks that investors can take to achieve the most optimal portfolios.

The investment process for any alternative strategy should be no different than that of traditional strategies: coherent, transparent, repeatable and scalable. We believe that alternative strategies should be based on fundamental research into both “bottom up” microeconomic and “top down” macroeconomic factors, as well as discrete and identifiable market dislocations. Alternative strategies should be amenable to clear explanation and based on recurring, exploitable market inefficiencies rather than one-off dislocations. All else equal, the strategy should focus on liquid opportunities.

Chicago Equity Partners offers private hedge funds for qualified purchasers. Generally, Chicago Equity Partners has a long history of providing liquid, custom solutions to our clients. For example, we have designed bespoke products for our fixed income clients with distinct balance sheet and cash flow needs.

For more information on our alternative and custom strategy capabilities, please contact us at info@chicagoequity.com.